Certificate of employment

How it works

1. Put the employee's name in the recipient line and leave the honorific off — this is a statement, not an address.
2. Write the facts into the body: position, department, the date they started, and the kind of employment. Keep it to what you can stand behind.
3. Put your company's name, address and the signing officer in the issuer block, and add the seal or stamp if you use one.
4. Download and print it on your own letterhead if you have one.

Frequently asked questions

Why does this look plain when the certificate maker draws a border?

Because this is not an award. A certificate of employment goes to a landlord, a bank or an immigration office and gets filed with other A4 paperwork; a gold border would make it look like something a school hands out. The frame is fixed to none here, and the page is portrait for the same reason.

What should it actually say?

What the person asking needs and no more: that the employment exists, the position, and the period. Salary is sometimes asked for — put it in only if the employee has asked you to, because a certificate they show to a landlord is a document about them, not about your payroll.

Is it a legal document?

It is a statement by you, signed and sealed, and that is what most requests want. It is not a government-issued document, and some countries have a prescribed form for the same purpose — a 在職証明書 for a Japanese visa application, for instance, may have to follow the office's own layout. Check before you send this in place of one.

Can I use it for someone who has left?

Yes: change the title to a certificate of previous employment and give the period with both dates. That is the commoner request of the two, and it is the one a future employer usually asks for.

Is anything uploaded?

No. The name, the salary if you include one and your company's seal are drawn into the PDF in this browser and go nowhere else.